VARIATIONS IN TYPHOID BACILLI 297 



II. Variations in Reaction to Serum 



INAGGLUTINABILITY AND AGGLTJTINABILITY OF TYPHOID BACILLI 



Agglutinability of typhoid bacilli isolated from specimens 

 (blood, feces, urine, or bile) from the patient may vary greatly, 

 depending to some extent on the number of culture generations 

 for which they have been carried on artificial media. This 

 has been reported by many workers (Forster (1897), Johnson 

 and MacTaggart (1897), Miiller, Eisenberg (1903), Sawyer (1912) 

 and others) . Thus, lack of agglutinability of the isolated baciUi 

 in early culture generations is sometimes misleading in regard to 

 diagnosis. 



Schmidt (1903), for instance, erroneously reported typhoid 

 bacilh as paratyphoid, owing to their inagglutinability. This 

 inagglutinable state, acquired by the bacilli in the human body, 

 can be easily produced by artificial means, such as cultivation 

 on antityphoid serum broth. Such observations were first 

 reported by Ransom and Kitashima, and by Miiller. The 

 former observed, in 1898, that the cholera spirillum lost its 

 agglutinability when they cultivated it in anticholera serum, 

 and the latter observed the same phenomenon in typhoid bacilli 

 in 1903. The literature upon this subject is extensive and has 

 been compiled in the articles of Eisenberg, Miiller, and others. 



As early as 1896 Metchnikoff and Bordet showed that cholera spirilla 

 could partially lose their agglutinability under certain circumstances. 

 Bail (1901) made similar observations with the typhoid bacillus, and 

 Kirstein (1904) showed that cultivation at various temperatures 

 could diminish the agglutinability of bacteria. It has been found, 

 indeed, that organisms isolated from different cases of the same dis- 

 ease often varied considerably in their agglutinability in one and the 

 same immune serum. This was noted by Grassberger and Schatten- 

 froh (1900) in their studies upon anthrax. Bordet and Sleeswyk (1910) 

 studying the whooping cough bacillus showed that when a horse is 

 immunized with a whooping cough bacillus which has been grown upon 

 blood media, the serum of this animal will powerfully agglutinate this 

 strain, but possesses little or no agglutinating activity against the same 

 strain habituated to growth on plain agar, an obseivation which they 



